Entropy
by amonitrate
Summary: Part 2 of the Occam's Razor series. Everyone writes a postHorsemen fic. This is mine. Centers around the events at Bordeaux. Gen.  Methos deals with his anger. Badly.


**Occam's Razor 2 : Entropy**

_Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out._  
_Anton Chekhov_

As he stalked the back alleys of Seacouver, Methos thought up ways to kill Adam Pierson. Last night's unexpected quickening roiled through him still, shortened his already edgy temper and his patience. He'd found himself unable to either sleep or stay still for long. His need to break something had driven him out of his apartment before he ruined a priceless artifact or sentimental keepsake he'd later miss.

The Immortal he'd slain had not been much older than MacLeod but like the Highlander he had taken a disproportionate number of heads for his age. It was too soon after Bordeaux - the new Quickening refused to be absorbed, rousing the unsettled shade of Silas. Silas the gentle destroyer. 

Silas had probably never been human, but Methos mourned him all the same. While the events in Bordeaux had spiraled out of his careful control he had thought only of thwarting Kronos. Even after his failed attempt to talk to Silas in the lab he had clung to the belief that without Kronos' leadership Silas would go back to the quiet woodland existence he had maintained for close to a thousand years, content with his animals. Had it played out differently he probably would have been right.

Methos clamped down on a rising wave of irrational anger. Anger at himself for letting Kronos get the upper hand in so many ways. For letting MacLeod's opinion of him matter so much, after hundreds of years of answering to no one but himself. Anger at MacLeod's bloody honor. Anger at his Brothers for failing to grow or change in the three thousand years since he had left them. Seething, swirling fury that he couldn't pin on any particular cause. Intellectually he knew the Quickening had only awakened anger he had been denying since Kronos resurfaced, but knowing did little to curb the emotion. 

This used to be easy. The energies put to rest within a short time, the anger contained and quickly forgotten. The two hundred year sabbatical he had taken from the Game must have lowered his tolerance more than he realized. Joe asked once why Immortals never seemed to reach the end of their limits as far as taking heads went. Methos tried to explain how a Quickening could be like any strong drug, like alcohol. The more you took the more you could handle - to a point. Of course he had been speaking as Adam Pierson then, couching the information in theoreticals. Unfortunately, Quickenings worked the opposite way too - harder to assimilate the longer you abstained. He hadn't exactly told Joe that part. After all, Joe hadn't asked. Joe needn't worry about that kind of thing ever happening to MacLeod. MacLeod was shooting for the world-record in beheadings per year.

MacLeod. Methos snarled to himself, stuffed fisted hands deep into the pockets of his coat. His last encounter with the Scot simmered with the lingering tendrils of the recent Quickenings to leave him scoured raw inside, empty and craving violence to fill the space. Earlier that evening he had tried to sit still long enough to eat something at the greasy spoon near his apartment building but the waitress moved too slowly, her California twang grating against his eardrums. He decided it was time to make a hasty exit when he realized his nails were leaving bloody half-moons on his palms, the slight pain the only distraction he had from ripping her head off. Verbally, he hoped, but in his current mood he just couldn't risk it. 

Since Methos had given up wanton murder and pillaging sometime around the birth of the Greeks he thought it would be better to fob off his anger on a target less vulnerable than the poor waitress. Adam Pierson was convenient. The old boy had outstayed his welcome, outlived his usefulness. It was time for Adam to go. 

Methos supposed he could just let Pierson fade away - disappear into the ether, but where was the fun in that? Car accident maybe? Too public. There was always the chance of winding up in a morgue. Methos really hated morgues.

The last time one of his alter egos died in public had turned into more trouble than he had patience for right now. He'd been living in Manhattan in the early seventies, working as an artist's assistant. The work had been relaxing - mostly manual labor. Constructing frames and stretcher bars for painters. New York drew him like a fly to honey. Despite the fact that the city was the epitome of all he loathed about the latter half of the 20th century - the filth, the waste, the bad taste in outerwear, he'd stayed, happy in his own way. Until the morgue fiasco had put an end that particular doomed love affair.

Christopher Benjamin - his identity at the time - had been pronounced quite dead at the scene of a hit-and-run before his corpse mysteriously sat up and vacated the medical examiner's office. There was really no going back after that.

The carefully cultivated Benjamin identity only lasted two years. Methos detested building new identities. He preferred to wear his personas out. Adopting a new name and life history was harder work than most mortals would ever imagine. The details were the most difficult for the 5,000-year-old man: little things that seemed inconsequential but without which an identity rang false even to the untrained. 

Geographic specifics were important - accent, slang, speech patterns, dress, mannerisms. Childhood memories were the worst - Methos had no frame of reference at all for these, so he tended to co-opt stories from the lives of children he had helped raise over the course of his long life. Updated and edited for the correct time and place of course. Couldn't go around telling people about the time you and your best buddy stole the sacrificial calf from the temple priests. That wouldn't do at all.

Even after millennia of practice Methos still slipped now and again, made mistakes like forgetting that a persona who appeared thirty in the nineteen-nineties could have no first hand memories of Altamont. Pop culture had become the most tricky and vital part of his identities, and the easiest to get wrong. MacLeod never understood his obsession with television, with current music and movies. Young adults today were expected to possess intimate familiarity with these things. Methos didn't particularly like television - but he watched it regularly, made himself sit through the most inane movies the way mortals forced themselves to jog. MacLeod had it easy - no one thought twice about a wealthy antiques dealer's interest in history and opera; or his almost complete lack of knowledge about current fads. Maybe his next identity should be an heir to some vast fortune. It would sure beat Pierson's grad student budget.

Admittedly though, Pierson had been an easy identity to slide into. After Christopher's untimely demise Methos returned to Paris, as he had done whenever things had gotten sticky over the past thousand years or so. He liked Paris. Paris allowed him the anonymity of any metropolitan center but still retained a sense of deep history that comforted him in a way that the cities of the New World could not. Paris was old, but not too old – Methos couldn't spend much time in the truly old places without the risk of losing himself altogether. He'd taken Alexa to Cairo and Jerusalem, to Greece and even Santorini, which he'd known as Thira; but he spent the entire time wholly as Adam, refusing Methos any recognition or familiarity. Those places were tempting and too dangerous. 

Ahh, Adam. Adam had been almost too easy. That was why he was so risky to hold on to. Easy eventually led to laziness, to mistakes. Pierson had lived twelve good years, but Methos was tired of him. Adam was just too… nice. People trusted him at the drop of a hat. Look at where that had gotten him with MacLeod. Methos wasn't much in the mood for nice or trusted these days. Convenient qualities, yes, but too difficult to maintain. He wasn't capable of nice any longer. It wasn't in his nature.

Nice was Adam Pierson. Nice was Dr. Adams. Even punked-out Chris Benjamin had been nice, for a New Yorker. Methos… Methos had seldom been nice. Perhaps whoever he had been before Methos was nice; but that person existed only in a few fragmented images that were more dream than memory. Most of the time he doubted there had ever been anyone before Methos. Methos was all he knew. His only constant. Without Methos he was faceless – a mask without a wearer.

So. Adam Pierson must die. Maybe Pierson could commit suicide. After all, he'd just lost his job with a prestigious historical society – wink, wink – and his postgraduate fellowship at the Sorbonne had been revoked. Methos growled to himself in annoyance. No matter what form Pierson's demise took there would have to be some sort of official seal of approval involved. The red tape that surrounded Alexa's quite natural death had proved what Methos had only known intellectually – death at the end of the 20th century was one of the most bureaucratic of human events. One couldn't just die in anonymous peace any longer. 

It was pointless – there was no easy way to finish off Pierson without help. MacLeod was most definitely not an option. The Scot would probably consider the murder of one's alter ego to be something akin to fratricide. He doubted Joe would be willing to lend a hand either. The Watcher hadn't reacted to his sordid past with quite the knee-jerk revulsion MacLeod was unable to set aside; but nevertheless Joe was still wary of him. Besides, Pierson had been Joe's friend before the Watcher ever met Methos. Methos couldn't ask him to kill his friend. Maybe he'd look up Amanda again. She couldn't possibly still be angry at him. Of all people, Amanda knew the value of a timely demise.

The brittle spring inside his chest relaxed a bit. Amanda would help him. She might even think murdering Adam Pierson was fun.


End file.
